Thursday, April 26, 2012

More details are coming out via the Austinist about the Austin high school teacher reportedly arrested for .033 ounces of marijuana. Now KXAN-TV, on whose report Grits' earlier post was based, has reported additional, clarifying detail about why police executed the search warrant. Says the Austinist:

And there's more. According to the "Proposed Suspension Without Pay
of Term Contract Employee Pending Termination" for Grayson, the teacher
"had been previously arrested on February 25, 2012, for driving while
intoxicated and failed to timely disclose said arrest to AISD..."

Regardless of how you feel about the marijuana charge, we can all
recognize this case isn't so much about bong-rips as a pattern of
illegal activity, the worst of which, obviously, has nothing to do with a
few sprinkles of pot.

The alleged inculpatory texts certainly justify the warrant, and if that had been reported I'd not have questioned its issuance. But I still find the arrest for de minimis pot possession in such a situation to be bit like piling on. (They let him bond out, reported KXAN, so presumably nobody told the judge he was an immediate threat.) Any sex-crime charges he may end up facing would be much, much more serious than pot possession in a school zone.

To add a grim prequel to the current trials of Ian Grayson, a Grits commenter pointed out a heart wrenching story about Ian Grayson's family that I'll excerpt here in closing:

Ian Grayson is Rod Grayson's son...Ian was a baby when he lost his
father, Rod...student (now attorney) John Daniel Christian fatally shot
Rod Grayson in class in 1978...Ian grew up without a father and chose
teaching as his vocation...an honorable decision...perhaps part of a
family's legacy of being teachers...for whatever reason, a good man and a
good teacher have been destroyed ...

This is the second
time that Austin students have lost a talented and caring teacher named
Mr. Grayson, although we can only hope this farcical time is not
permanent. John Daniel Christian, then a Murchison student, now a
lawyer, fatally shot his teacher Rod Grayson one May day in 1978. We
(Texans) gave the lethal injection to David Powell for a murder
committed on the same day, but most people have forgotten (or never knew
about) Rod Grayson and his shooter. Very, very, sad. If you pray, pray
for Ian Grayson.

From all I can tell via our friends at Google, the story about Grayson's father checks out, and Michael Corcoran has much more, calling the murder "Austin's secret." Grayson's killer was "the son of George Christian, former White House press secretary under Lyndon Johnson, John Christian [who] is currently a tax lawyer in Austin." Reports Corcoran, "Recently suspended Austin High School geography teacher Ian Grayson was
only a year old when his father was killed in that classroom."

What a terrible, multi-generational family (and AISD) tragedy; much bigger, and profoundly sadder, it seems, than just a small-time pot bust.

I'd like to take this opportunity and remind everyone that more police officers are convicted of child sex crimes than all other professions combined. It's law enforcement's "dirty little secret", and one we are committed to exposing. Police officers use their positions of trust to violate our children. Their victims are threatened with physical harm and told no one will believe their word over that of a police officer. And often, police officers will threaten their victim's family with death in order to silence their victim.

Please visit our Facebook pages and learn why cops are so sexually attracted to little children and even infants, and sometimes even animals. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tribute-to-survivors-of-child-sexual-assault-by-law-enforcement-officers/180584842010594

Psychiatrists have acknowledged for decades that sex crimes aren't about sex at all but about power and control over others. And just who in our society desires power and control more than those who pursue careers in law enforcement?

And remember, almost 90% of convicted child sex offenders admit to wanting a career in law enforcement at one time or another...

I think it much more appropriate to pray for his two little children. He is an adult, and he can learn/grow/change if he so chooses. His children, on the other hand? I'm afraid they may just be tossed about in foster care.

It is sad that when the public catches a whiff of a charge like this, the person accused is, essentially, already convicted. My mother and uncle are attorneys, and I have worked for them and some of their friends. I have heard and seen their fellow defense attorneys lament over several scotchs, the impossibility of a fair shot in these cases. Each time a case like this popped up and went to trial, it never went well. And some of the clients, I believe, were truly innocent, but frightened at the prospect of going to trial, staring down the barrel of 10 years in prison, and facing a jury with an undoubtedly irreversible bias before the facts are presented, which are few and far between in these cases. Hopefully, for Mr. Grayson, this case will never see the Grand Jury. He is a bright, committed teacher with awards(2009 NOVA award from the Texas Council of the Social Studies) and a personal interest in carrying forward the change that his father could have made. If we had more teachers like this at the helms of classrooms across the country, then maybe there would be hope; hope of dispensing with the stupidity that substitutes accusations and investigations for a "throw away the key" mentality, and ultimately ruins lives. We do not know the content of these text messages. That is a concrete fact. And the fact that we do not know the content of the text messages is the only thing we know. So I hope and pray, for Mr. Grayson's sake, that the populace will not convict him in the court of public opinion, armed with stupidity and ignorance, and will not ruin his life (again) by stoning him before he has a chance to prove his case. You are in my most ardent of prayers, Mr. Grayson.

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